Akasa Galileo Ultra-slim Fanless Thin ITX Case

For a fanless heatpipe-cooled chassis, the Galileo is not difficult to assemble
at all. Unlike cases from Streacom and HDPLEX, there are no metal blocks to
pin the heatpipes to the interior case walls to facilitate heat transfer. This
messy procedure often left our fingers covered in thermal compound as we struggled
to position the pipes correctly. In this case, the heatpipes have only one place
to go, making it fairly idiot-proof.

As the Galileo supports only thin mini-ITX motherboards, we used a GA-H77TN kindly provided by Gigabyte. To maintain this Intel LGA1155 board's low profile, it's equipped with a pair of SODIMM memory slots, a mini PCI Express slot, and an mSATA connector.

For power, the board's DC-IN jack is of the 19V variety rather than the typical 12V used in most AC bricks designed for picoPSUs and other DC-DC power supplies. A 90W adapter from a Dell notebook fit the bill nicely.

The nuts attached to the Galileo's backplate slide freely between the LGA115x and LGA775 mounting position and they are also rather shallow, not going through the mounting holes. As a result, you have to hold it in place as each screw is secured.

Thermal compound is applied to the processor, then the bottom half of the base with the affixed mounting bracket is laid on top and secured to the backplate. More compound is applied to the grooves and the two heatpipes are positioned on the outer furrows.

Because the brackets are attached to the underside of the heatblock, when the screws mating the heatblock to the board are tightened, the brackets bend and pull away from the heatblock, leaving a gap. This could have been avoided (somewhat, at least) by having the bracket attach to the top side of the heatblock.

The second half of the base is placed on top and screwed into the first. The other end of the heatpipes are sandwiched between the two heatsink portions, disappearing into the bulky black mass.

From an aesthetic standpoint, the asymmetry of the chassis and smudge attracting access panel are overshadowed by the blinding blue power LED.